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From: Andrew <andys@nospam.com>
Newsgroups: comp.mobile.android
Subject: Re: Why do people use the Google Play Store search engine?
Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2024 16:19:31 -0000 (UTC)
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Andy Burns wrote on Mon, 2 Dec 2024 07:54:26 +0000 :

> Sometimes The Play Store will hide an app, or claim it's not available 
> for a given device.  Most recent example here, the new Google Weather 
> app, supposedly a Pixel exclusive, yet it refused to install on my 
> Pixel8a, I downloaded from apkmirror instead.

Andy is correct where I will mainly point out that *almost always* if not
always, the Google Play Store search will NOT find a *lot* of apps that
exist on the Google Play Store.

Please realize I *tested* this both for the Aurora Store developers on XDA
and for the Skyica App Finder developers - it's all in the XDA Forum.

Trust me. I know far more than any of you do on this particular topic.

The Google Play Store is like having a dictionary with hundreds of
thousands of words in it - where most of you "think" that's everything.

It's not. In fact, it's not even close to everything in the repo!

Skyica App Finder uses open-source Google Play Store repository scrapers
which find *millions* of words for you in that very same dictionary.

And even then, Skyica doesn't always find *everything* in the repo.
Ask me how I know this fact.

The developer is *improving* Skyica constantly - but it's so much better
than the Google Play Store search that there is no comparison possible.

Plus... you guys are *forgetting* the filtering - which is the best in the
world - and where the Google Play Store filtering is the worst imaginable.

Please trust me that I tell you what I know, and I tell you what I don't
know (as my ego is in what I can learn) - and I tell you there is no
possible comparison between these two feature of Skyica versus GPS search:

1. Skyica *search* finds apps the Google Play Store search doesn't & 
2. Skyica *filters* are so comprehensive that there is no comparison.

> Other Pixel exclusives like generating AI wallpaper,or managing 
> screenshots, I could probably force install them the same way, but ...meh.

I'm not sure what Andy is getting at with that sentence so I simply ask for
clarification.